I was asked this question by a close friend and was not able to give an answer. She was wondering: if God is so loving and merciful, why did he punish all of the sinners by flooding the earth? If love is the first thing why did he do something so seemingly cruel? If this could be explained in a way that is sensitive to those who are just hearing God’s word for the first time that would be great.
Your friend is right to understand God as loving and merciful but God is also just. We count on God’s justice when we suffer from evil. In the context of the story of Noah and the flood, the fact that a loving and merciful God thought that the only just thing to do would be to flood the earth reveals just how wickedly sinful and evil humanity had become. Jewish tradition relays that murder and bloodshed were common and no one cared for his neighbor, God was mocked as unneeded given the greatness humanity had achieved. This time period is portrayed as a moral wasteland in which Noah, as shaky as he was in both morals and faith, was considered the most righteous of his generation. Without the flood it is said the humanity would have destroyed itself on its own and that the flood was the chance for any human person with any goodness to start over and save the human race.
However Jewish tradition does not portray God as uncaring, it reveals that God instructed Noah to build the ark slowly. This was meant as a last warning and chance for repentance and mercy. Everyone had a chance to repent and enter the ark. In fact, certain strains of interpretation have understood the flood as the result of God’s tears over the heartlessness of the human race.
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